“I honestly don’t know.” The student is looking at a grid showing the days of the week broken into hour blocks that she’s filled in with her classes, sleeping and meal times, and rehearsals. This is her response when I ask her what she did in all of those empty blocks representing unscheduled time instead of her work. And it’s true – she really doesn’t know how she spent those free hours. I get it.

Picture this: You go from 6:30am wake-ups to 10:00am ones. You go from four intense hours of learning to a 50-minute class followed by a three hour break. You go from abiding by a curfew to having no curfew at all. These are the kinds of transitions that college freshman eagerly look forward to (and make me wish I were still in college…). But the awesomeness of these transitions is often coupled with the loss of some strong support systems.

As a parent, you want your child to succeed in high school and go on to college. Naturally, you want to do everything you can to help your child get the best grades possible. So, you hire tutors for every subject. You sit with your son every night to monitor his homework, and you wake him up every morning to be sure he gets to school on time. You set up a study schedule and help him review for his tests. You contact his teachers on a regular basis to find out how he is doing in each of his classes.

And while this exhausting approach may yield some good grades, you find yourself thinking “How will he learn to function independently in college?”